The Cure

Encounter with the Owner

"So... how's my baby? I haven't taken her out today, is she alright?" Mr. Fallaway said, rolling the window down manually. "How does one live with this?" Asmar heard the man mumble, struggling with the turning of the lever.

"Come on, Fallaway. We both know you're never going to use it. The Smentists can and will use it. Just let it go."

"Mm, yes, well, there's just one problem: I. Own it! And unfortunately, unless you have 26 million dollars to spare, it's going to stay that way."

"You do realize how much of a villain you sound like, right?" Asmar threw on a fake smirk for good measure.

The "villain"'s answer was not as satisfactory as Asmar had hoped: Mr. Fallaway simply pursed his lips and put on a grin to make his thief's look like a frown, and, making his face mocking a puppy, he said, "Oh, yes, I do, I do! Oh, you have no idea how much that meant to me!" Wiping away all signs of fake happiness, Mr. Fallaway's face fell: the edges of his mouth dropped, his eyebrows, which were high up on his forehead, fell to touch his eyelids, and his cheeks drooped down. He had played before, but now he was going to get his prized possession back. "Listen, squire, I'm in no mood for games, at least not anymore!" The man dramatically threw open the car door, almost making Asmar, whose car was not in the best shape, jump to save it. "I suggest you give me the vile and get out of here!"

Seeing that he was running out of time to get out of the house (and Mr. Fallaway's way), Asmar decided to go with his gut, which also happened to be the Smentist's (his "adventuring" group) code. "Mr. Fallaway, I am afraid that due to medical concerns in the case of the planet, our planet, the Earth, we are falling far behind." Asmar started to pace back and forth and thank his parents for signing him up for theater class. "So far, sir, that we must take the only possible option: thievery. Of course, all crimes or harms produced by this alternative are all for the sake of the planet and the people on it." He snuck himself a grin of pride in between long breaths. "So, with that solemn apology, I leave you and wish you a very Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Cheerful Kwanzaa, or whatever you do celebrate. Goodbye, Mr. Fallaway. And a Happy New Year." Brushing past the stunned man, Asmar hopped into his dented, rusting, unheated Volkswagen Beetle that his parents got brand-new in 1998, the second year they were produced.

As the young man drove away, his cheerful whistling drowned out Mr. Fallaway's warning words called after him: "I shall not forget this!" Just as Asmar was rounding the corner, he barely heard the man say, "Wear your mask!"